Bible Study - Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, April 1, 2025

Reverend Michael Mwangi

Senior Pastor, Fedha Church, Kenya Assemblies of God 

a. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: 

Paul will, in wonderful detail, describe for us the mind of Jesus in the following verses. But here, before he describes the mind of Jesus, he tells us what we must do with the information.
He does not give all that is in the mind of Christ in these verses. He selects those qualities of our Lord which fit the needs of the Philippians at that moment.

It is all too easy for us to read the following description of Jesus and admire it from a distance. God wants us to be awed by it, but also to see it as something that we must enter into and imitate.

 Let this mind means that it is something that we have choice about.

i. Remember also that this mind is something granted to us by God. 

1 Corinthians 2:16 says that we have the mind of Christ. But let this mind shows us that it is also something we must choose to walk in. You have to let it be so.
Jesus was in the form of God.
Who, being in the form of God.

a. In the form of God: 

This describes Jesus’ pre-incarnate existence. We must remind ourselves that Jesus did not begin His existence in the manger at Bethlehem, but is eternal God.

Being: This is from the ancient Greek verb huparchein, which “describes that which a man is in his very essence and which cannot be changed. It describes that part of a man which, in any circumstances, remains the same.” (Barclay)

Our Lord’s possession of the divine essence did not cease to be a fact when He came to earth to assume human form.

Form: This translates the ancient Greek word morphe. It “always signifies a form which truly and fully expresses the being which underlies it… the words mean ‘the being on an equality with God.

ii. “‘God’ has a form, and ‘Jesus Christ’ exists in this form of God.” (Lenski)
Colossians 1
15. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
iii. Wuest explains that the ancient Greek word translated form is very difficult to translate. When we use the word form, we think of the shape of something; but the ancient Greek word had none of that idea. It is more the idea of a mode or an essence; it is the essential nature of God, without implying a physical shape or image. “Thus the Greek word for ‘form’ refers to that outward expression which a person gives of his inmost nature
Exodus 20
4. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 
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